Sometimes a fresh new idea doesn’t require the invention of something genuinely
new, but just the composition of existing disparate concepts. (In fact, I’d
wager that’s more common than not.) Slay the Spire, the debut title from Mega
Crit Games, is a perfect example. Take a deck-building mechanic (very popular
right now in titles like Hearthstone), add a rogue-like randomly generated
map to explore (also very hot right now), and build that on top of a very
simple turn-based combat game and you’ve got something that feels both familiar
and yet like a new experience.

Somehow I spent the first thirty years of my nerdy life without playing
Dungeons and Dragons. After listening to the first season of
The Adventure Zone I
decided I’d been missing out and convinced a small group of friends (with
even less experience than I with pen-and-paper RPGs) to spend an evening
imagining themselves in a world I’d made up.

I’m a sucker for games about digging. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something
satisfying about going deeper and deeper for more precious resources as the danger
increases them dragging your haul back to the surface.

Often conversations about recent video games center around what a game does that’s new, as if new experiences were like a breath of fresh air. In the case of Steamworld Heist, there is little that is really novel, but the humble execution of the game as a whole feels genuinely refreshing.